Stronger together: towards constructive conversations about strength differences, gender, and sex

ABSTRACT

The differences in strength development processes and maximum strength levels between cisgender men and women – i.e. the ‘strength gap’ – are considerably fraught topics, with significant implications for our broader understandings of sex and gender. The polarization of exercise science and sociocultural research about the relationships between strength, gender, and sex adds further challenges. As a result of their highly diverging conclusions on the strength gap as well as the general absence of communication between the two fields, it becomes nearly impossible to have meaningful discussions that acknowledge the not-just-biological, not-just-cultural complexities of strength development and maximal strength levels. To aid in connecting these seemingly disparate academic fields, this paper engages a biocultural reading of research on the strength training body. By framing the body as the ever-developing result of inextricably intertwined biological and cultural influences, this critical reading outlines the limitations of our current understandings of strength, illuminates areas of complexity and contradiction, demonstrates shared concepts, and suggests possible topics for boundary-crossing inquiry.

KEYWORDS:

• Strength
• gender
• sex differences
• resistance training
• strength gap

Introduction

The social and biological sciences are consistently separated from one another, with scholarly spaces, academic journals, methodologies, and concepts that infrequently overlap. Yet there exists an undercurrent of research and theorization that seeks to bring the two together. This is particularly true where the human body is concerned, as critical scholars note that disparate ‘nature-‘ and ‘nurture-‘ focused disciplines create shallow and slanted interpretations of bodies (Grosz, 1994). For example: without concepts originating in gender studies, neuroscience produces understandings of the brain that amplify ‘sex-based’ differences while obscuring similarities (Nikoleyczik, 2012). Similarly, feminist sociocultural theorization and inquiry that overlooks the biological body can suppress ‘the embodied experiences of those we proclaim to care so much about’ (Thorpe, 2014, p. 670), implying bodily sameness where differences are impactful. Some theorists therefore advocate for the adoption of research perspectives that address the body holistically, recasting it as an ever-developing composition of entangled influences that cannot be isolated for the purpose of study (Fox & Alldred, 2015). These perspectives require new forms of interaction between the historically separated social and natural sciences. Needed are interdisciplinary inquiries that work to reconcile the findings and concepts from social and biological fields of study, as well as transdisciplinary projects that bring together researchers from these ‘oppositional’ disciplines to address shared problems in novel ways (Thorpe et al., 2020).

In line with these theorists, critical sport scholars have acknowledged the limits of the traditional compartmentalization of physiological and sociocultural research on the physically active body, with disciplinary silos minimizing the capacity to create positive social change and improve individual health and athletic performance (Heywood, 2017; Schofield et al., 2020). To date, there are few existing projects within sport studies that have sought to engage both social and biological perspectives on the body. Of these, most have explored the complex underpinnings of athlete health, ultimately proposing unique and multidimensional interventions (Heather et al., 2021; Heywood, 2011; Parsons et al., 2021). A focus on the simultaneously biological and cultural construction of athletic bodies could also challenge what we believe we know about cisgender men’s and women’s comparative athletic capacities. Not only are sex-based biological traits (including genitalia, chromosomes, and hormones) better depicted as a spectrum than a binary (Fausto-Sterling, 2000), but athleticism is also significantly shaped by sociocultural factors such as access to training facilities and strength and conditioning opportunities (Capranica et al., 2013). Research that crosses disciplinary boundaries to recognize the complexity of athleticism has the best capacity to demonstrate the physicality that women are capable of, allowing us to further question normative understandings of dualistic sex and athletic capacity (Thorpe et al., 2023).

Physical strength – and its multifaceted relationships with sex and gender – is one area where such cross-disciplinary inquiry is needed. As a competitive, cisgender woman strength athlete (as well as a feminist sociocultural scholar), I am intimately familiar with the not-just-biological, not-just-cultural reality of strength. I have repeatedly seen that gendered social narratives about the ‘acceptability’ of muscle and fat mass can have negative impacts on women strength athletes’ competitive careers; I also know that no amount of feminist rage will add fifty kilograms to my best lifts to stack up with men of equal competitiveness at my bodyweight. Yet sociocultural and physiological research on strength, sex, and gender is conducted in isolation. Both fields examine how cisgender men’s and women’s experiences of strength development differ, an important area of inquiry given that it allows us to develop approaches to strength training tailored for women after decades of research focused primarily on men (Nuckols, 2022). But sociocultural scholars cannot demonstrate the material outcomes of their proposed interventions, while physiological researchers are not equipped with concepts to integrate participants’ social experiences of strength training into their findings. These gaps significantly hinder the applicability of each fields’ conclusions and their ability to aid strength-training populations.

The topic also requires a holistic lens given that maximal physical strength has long been upheld as an ‘essential difference’ (Messner, 2005, p. 313) between male – and female-assigned bodies, often used to uphold naturalistic narratives that frame men as rightfully dominating women (Dowling, 2000). Whether cisgender men and women are perceived to have small or large differences in maximal strength, and whether those divergences are believed to be due to biological or cultural influences on strength development, has major ramifications for women and those identifying with marginalized genders. Yet the topic is sharply divided between the social and biological sciences. Exercise scientists see a 30–40% difference in maximal strength – a phenomenon known as the strength gap – between men and women (Ansdell et al., 2020; Thibault et al., 2010), while sociocultural researchers argue that this gap is either much smaller than believed or cannot be measured at all (Capranica et al., 2013, Dowling, 2000). We are left without a common language about strength differences and more questions than answers about the size and etiology of this possible difference.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the connections between these two fields of study, set the foundations for a shared language that enables interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialogue and research, and take a small step towards reforging our understanding of the relationships between strength, gender, and sex. To do so, this paper recounts a critical reading of exercise science and sociocultural literature about men’s and women’s comparative experiences of and responses to strength training. Using insights about the biocultural, developmental construction of the body (Frost, 2016), these divergent strands of inquiry are read alongside one another, seeking to answer the following questions: how do exercise scientists and sociocultural researchers theorize the process of strength development? How do these processes play out for cisgender men and women over the course of a strength training career, resulting in divergences in maximal strength? This analysis will showcase common concepts that may bridge an ontologically and epistemologically constructed chasm, demonstrate areas of potential collaboration, and conclude by suggesting new ways of discussing what we know about strength differences. Before reading the findings of sociocultural and exercise science research on strength with each other, however, it is necessary to characterize why the two fields fail to communicate.

Outlining strength research

From the outset, exercise scientists and sociocultural researchers draw upon disparate ontologies about the relative importance of gender and sex in shaping men’s and women’s strength development and outcomes. Exercise science situates dimorphic sex, comprised of ‘inherent biological factors, including endogenous hormones and genetics’ (Landen et al., 2023, p. 420) as being of primary importance in determining a person’s strength capacity. Researchers situated within this paradigm largely conduct controlled studies in labs to take quantitative measurements related to sex and strength, with topics of interest ranging from lifting biomechanics to muscle protein synthesis rates. Conversely, sociocultural researchers of strength emphasize the role that gendered norms, roles, and practices play in shaping an individual’s strength-related outcomes (Brigden et al., 2023; Roth & Basow, 2004). Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods that include auto/ethnography, interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires, these researchers engage with a diversity of theories and concepts – from hypermasculinity (Sherouse, 2016) and emphasized femininity (Dworkin, 2001) to edgework (Worthen & Baker, 2016) and empowerment (Brace-Govan, 2004) – to explore the sociocultural factors that may delimit an individual’s strength training.

The two disciplines also differ in their interest in discussing the concept of the strength gap. Drawing upon the world record performances of elite strength athletes and a large number of controlled lab studies, exercise scientists readily put a number to the size of the strength difference between men and women (Ansdell et al., 2020; Kenney et al., 2015; Thibault et al., 2010). Sociocultural scholars are much less willing to engage in similar discussions. In The Frailty Myth (2000) – the only major work within the social sciences that discusses the strength gap in depth – Dowling offers a roadmap of women’s socially delimited (lack of) pathways to strength from infancy to adulthood. Drawing upon scientific research alongside sociocultural understandings of the gendering of strength and physical activity, Dowling ultimately concludes that the strength gap is a product of the general size difference between men’s and women’s bodies as well as their comparative access to strength training. While my own re-reading of literature draws inspiration from Dowling’s foundational work, it departs from The Frailty Myth in several ways. Where Dowling offers an outstanding summary and critique of existing literature, this analysis looks to the future by proffering pathways forward and suggesting specific topics for research. This paper also seeks to go beyond Dowling’s focus on the similarities between men’s and women’s bodies by introducing physiological differences in strength building. Finally, where Dowling situates the strength gap as being more the product of sociocultural influences than biological factors, this paper suggests instead that we cannot come to conclusions regarding the etiology of the strength gap with the siloed research that currently exists.

Given the two fields’ disparate orientations towards strength, there is little communication between them and few existing studies that meaningfully recognize the others’ perspective. There are a few exceptions: Szivak et al. (2013) consider the possible impact of their participants’ gendered athletic backgrounds while comparing men’s and women’s adrenal responses to high-intensity resistance training, while Nelson and Jette (2022) discuss whether sport-specific bodily norms in American Olympic Weightlifting reflect the physiological processes of strength gain. The study of strength needs more interdisciplinary investigations like these, which seek to integrate the concepts and findings of both fields as they relay their data. There is also a distinct need for transdisciplinary collaborations that engage teams of sociocultural and physiological scholars to study strength. To date, there are no strength-focused studies that are explicitly designed with both biology and culture in mind, and understandably so: there are significant challenges in bringing together entirely separate ontologies and topics of inquiry.

Theoretical framework & methods

Finding a shared language between sociology and exercise science relies on a theoretical perspective that posits that these two fields have something in common: they study the same always-already-biological, always-already-cultural body. Dissatisfied with the Western tradition of separating ‘nature’ from ‘nurture’ – a framework that also serves to situate humanity as distinct from (and superior to) the environment and non-human creatures – political scientist and gender studies scholar Samantha Frost (2016) suggests that humans might be better defined as ‘biocultural creatures.’ Per Frost, we are not biological entities that can be viewed in isolation from our (cultural and material) surroundings. Rather, we are ‘biocultural in the sense that [we] develop, grow, persist, and die in an environment or habitat that is the condition for [our] development, growth, persistence, and death’ (p.4). Drawing from this framework, Frost explores the biological sciences with an eye towards the biocultural construction of the body. Beginning with atoms and expanding in scale to DNA, Frost demonstrates that our bodies are porous, inextricably entangled with our environmental and cultural surroundings throughout the lifespan.

Frost’s concept of ‘biocultural creatures’ also implores us to think differently about how we research the body. By demonstrating the entanglement of biology and (cultural/material) environment down to the atomic level, Frost implies that no siloed academic discipline can separate out its domain of the body: strictly ‘biological’ and ‘sociocultural’ examinations will always be incomplete. Rather, we must ‘find ways to forge hybrid alliances between humanistic, sociological, and biological analyses of social and political life’ (p.153). One such alliance has already been created within sport studies. Seeking to comprehensively understand sportswomen’s development and experiences of Low Energy Availability (LEA) and Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), a transdisciplinary team of exercise physiologists and sociocultural sport scholars engaged in a years-long series of collaborations (Heather et al., 2021; Schofield et al., 2023; Thorpe et al., 2019). Using semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, blood tests, and examinations of bone health and energy availability, and drawing in part on Frost’s theorization of the ‘biocultural,’ investigators observed new configurations of stimuli invisible to siloed disciplines. Not only did sociocultural factors (e.g. team hierarchies, sport culture) influence athletes’ biological bodies (e.g. hormonal fluctuations, bone density), but researchers additionally observed changes to athlete behaviors in response to their own physiological experiences of LEA, showcasing the influence of the biological on the sociocultural.

Drawing inspiration from this transdisciplinary work – which demonstrates that such ‘oppositional’ fields as sociology and exercise physiology can and should be brought together to explore challenging phenomena, with Frost’s concept of the ‘biocultural’ providing a useful theoretical backbone to do so – this analysis originates from the perception that a ‘hybrid alliance’ between the deeply divided physiological and sociocultural research of the sexed and gendered strength training body might begin through a biocultural rereading of their findings. Seeking to create a common language between the two disciplines, this paper posits that maximal strength might be best understood as biocultural: the intertwined result of muscle fiber types and ratios, norms influencing individuals’ access to strength training spaces, hormones, societal narratives about hormones, gendered bodily practices, and so on. This paper therefore recounts a new reading of exercise science and sociocultural research that is sensitive to the ways that they overlap when examining the biocultural strength training body. In doing so, this analysis demonstrates common concepts, disciplinary oversights, and fruitful areas of inquiry, all of which may help us to think differently about strength, sex, and gender.

This interdisciplinary reading began during a larger project: a systematic review of exercise science studies examining sex-based differences in resistance training. This project is still in progress: 130 studies out of ∼250 have been read for their topic, methods, findings, and the authors’ conclusions. It became evident that participants’ embodiments of gender were still present, despite the researchers’ emphasis on sex-based biology. This was most visible when researchers discussed the challenges of recruiting women with significant strength training experience and addressed the problem by bypassing it: for example, comparing ‘trained’ men and women with highly unequal training histories and strength levels (e.g. Ratamess et al., 2012). These practices led me to wonder whether it might be possible to bring sociocultural and physiological perspectives together to understand strength differences more meaningfully. Following this line of inquiry, the following analysis recounts a reading of this exercise science literature alongside (∼50) sociocultural examinations of strength, muscularity, and gender that I have encountered over the course of several years and multiple related research projects. Of these studies, fewer than ten examine the gendered experiences of strength athletes, a dozen focus on bodybuilders, another dozen discuss individuals who recreationally strength train, and the remainder recount the experiences of athletes in unrelated sports.

Of concern in this reading is the potential for misappropriation of exercise science research. Sociocultural scholars’ attempts to bring biological research into social theorization have been critiqued for their strange borrowings (Papoulias & Callard, 2010); in other words, selectively coopting biomedical findings that fit their political leanings. In fairness, exercise scientists also engage in forms of strange borrowing. Within this analysis, a number of studies comparing sex-based resistance training outcomes refer to ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably or purport to have ‘controlled’ for gender (e.g. Radaelli et al., 2014). Regardless of the offending discipline, these misappropriations can lead our understandings of the body in untenable directions and further distance biomedical and sociocultural inquiry (Papoulias & Callard, 2010). A feminist sociocultural researcher by training, I have attempted to hold to Rose’s (2013) exhortation to engage in a ‘double relationship’ (p.23) with biologically-oriented science by taking on board its findings while also remaining critical of its conclusions.

Analysis and discussion: towards cross-disciplinary dialogue

The most important tenet is ‘don’t get stuck trying to divide nature from nurture.’ Instead, think developmentally. (Fausto-Sterling, 2012, p. xiii)

To bring together sociocultural researchers’ and exercise scientists’ understandings of strength, this analysis takes a step back from the strength gap. Viewing the body as a biocultural entity that is always in development as it interacts with its material and social environments, this reading instead charts the process of strength development. To outline each field’s understanding of strength accumulation, the following analysis begins by recounting exercise scientists’ and sociocultural researchers’ most basic theorization of the process of strength development and tracks how these processes play out for cisgender men and women, starting from their initial exposures to strength training and continuing over a long-term strength training career. By focusing on the process of strength development rather than an end product (i.e. the strength gap), this reading demonstrates not just the expected ontological and epistemological differences between the two fields, but the ways in which they can (and do!) unexpectedly intertwine when examining the same biocultural entity.

Stronger, altogether: basic processes of strength development

The first step in deconstructing sociocultural and physiological researchers’ perspectives on the strength gap is to take their understandings of physical strength down to their foundational concepts. At the most general level, what is the process by which human beings become stronger? What elements or variables – regardless of sex or gender – are vital for a body to gain strength? The answers to these questions underlie each field’s perceptions of how differences in physical strength originate: individuals will be stronger or weaker than one another based on their experiences of or exposure to these most basic variables and processes.

Taking the physical, cultural, and social environment of strength as their primary foci, sociocultural research on the strength gap largely frames access and acceptance as the main factors underlying an individual’s strength building process. Some research draws attention to the need for resources when pursuing strength training, including personal economic resources to pay for gym memberships and quality coaching, nearby facilities with oftentimes expensive equipment, and the free time to engage in personal fitness pursuits (Chevan, 2008). Many other scholars emphasize social limitations on strength training, noting that for an individual to engage in an activity it must first be socially recognized as not only possible, but laudable within the multiple systems of norms and meanings surrounding them (Shilling, 1993). An individual’s interest in and ability to engage in strength training will therefore depend on whether it is believed socially acceptable for them to do so. Furthermore, individuals will generally seek to attain levels of strength and muscularity that are believed to be acceptable, embodying the (at times conflicting) norms that they are surrounded by. For example, a bodybuilder’s muscle mass may exceed the level deemed ‘desirable’ by many, but fit with the ‘ideal’ of bodybuilding subculture (Heywood, 1998; Klein, 1993).

At the most fundamental level, exercise scientists studying resistance training frame strength development as an adaptation to exposure to external resistance that gradually increases over time. The resistance that the individual works against must challenge their preexisting capabilities: too little resistance, and the body has nothing to positively adapt to. This is known as the principle of progressive overload: with time and application of increased resistance that pushes against the outer edges of one’s physical capacities, the body will adapt to tolerate that load (Hoeger et al., 1990). There are two major physiological systems that change in response to this loading and increase a person’s strength: the size of one’s muscles (i.e. hypertrophy), and the speed and synchronicity with which one’s muscles contract (i.e. improved neuromuscular control) (Kenney et al., 2015). Strength is therefore a function of the size of a person’s muscles alongside their efforts to teach those muscles to complete specific movements together. Improvements to one’s strength are thus understood to rely not only on biological factors but on external influences, particularly whether the individual has been exposed to the right kinds of training to develop both physiological processes underlying strength. A person exposed only to high-repetition, low-weight training – entirely avoiding one-repetition efforts with maximal weights – will have significantly lower levels of maximal strength than a person using both high-repetition/low-weight and low-repetition/high-weight training (Schoenfeld et al., 2017). Both would experience muscle growth, but the first person would lack the neuromuscular connections to make their muscles fire sufficiently under maximal loads.

Although exercise scientists and sociocultural researchers clearly hold differing understandings of strength gain, it is notable that neither group adheres to its side of the nature/nurture dichotomy. The biocultural body is visible in both disciplines: the sociological concept of embodiment and exercise science’s principles of adaptation and progressive overload recognize that the strength training body is a product of its interactions with its material and cultural environment. In fact, the two work together neatly to better theorize strength differences between individuals by highlighting the importance of an individual’s methods of strength training. Social norms around ‘acceptable’ levels of strength and muscularity might incentivize one person to use low-repetition/high-weight training while pushing another person to avoid it. These divergent training practices will cause differences in progressive overload, adaptation, and levels of maximal strength that accumulate over time.

Starting strength: initial experiences of strength divergence

Having traced sociocultural researchers’ and exercise scientists’ understandings of strength to their foundational concepts, it becomes possible to discuss how these processes play out similarly and differently for cisgender men and women, producing varying levels of strength. This section examines each discipline’s understanding of the preliminary moment at which men’s and women’s strength trajectories might begin to diverge, centering on a moment common to sociocultural and physiological research: individuals’ first experiences of purposive strength training.

Focusing on the effects of dominant, gendered discourses associated with strength, sociocultural scholars identify a marked divergence between men’s and women’s initial forays into strength training. Because dominant ideologies of gender associate strength and muscularity with masculinity (Connell, 2005), many men are encouraged to develop physical strength – or at least the appearance of it – from a young age. Scholars note a socially incentivized ‘drive for muscularity’ that begins in childhood and continues throughout adulthood, with weight training framed as key in affirming one’s masculinity and accommodating gendered body ideals (Davids et al., 2019; McCreary & Sasse, 2000). The associations between masculinity, muscularity, and strength persist in competitive sport: at every age and in a variety of sports, boys and men are given prioritized access to strength and conditioning coaching (McQuilliam et al., 2022; Reynolds et al., 2012).

In contrast, strength and muscularity have been historically framed as antithetical to femininity, creating significant social barriers for women to access strength training in general and heavy weightlifting in particular (Vasudevan & Ford, 2022). Scholars have repeatedly documented a gendering of free weight areas in commercial gyms wherein men ‘take up space’ by grunting, yelling, and monopolizing equipment (Brace-Govan, 2004), establishing a hyper-masculine zone where women (and men uninterested in this kind of masculinity) are framed as unwelcome intruders (Coen et al., 2018; Dworkin, 2003). To become accepted, women interested in lifting heavy weights may be required to adapt their personalities (Heywood, 1998). Scholar and powerlifter Ocobock (2023) recalls transitioning from being ‘an outsider and target of ridicule to a trustworthy spotter, a source of valuable lifting knowledge, and an ally for other women while also becoming an active participant in the toxic culture’ (pp.143). Women also note fears of experiencing unwanted touching (in the form of spotting) and unsolicited technique advice from men that ultimately bars them from heavy lifting spaces (Salvatore & Marecek, 2010).

It is important to note that (some of) these gendered connotations have changed in recent years. Dominant forms of masculinity still push men towards weight training (Davids et al., 2019), but femininity is no longer entirely oppositional to strength and (limited) muscularity. Women’s interest in recreational and competitive strength is growing: recent social media trends have proclaimed that ‘strong is the new skinny’ (Tiggemann & Zaccardo, 2018), and some strength sports have noted dramatic increases in women’s membership (Johnson, 2021). This is likely due to a combination of cultural shifts, including the explosive growth of CrossFit and other forms of high-intensity, weight-bearing fitness regimes (Washington & Economides, 2016), as well as a neoliberal health apparatus that links the appearance of physical fitness with morality (Brice & Thorpe, 2021). Yet the effects of the linkages between masculinity and strength on women’s initial strength training experiences – or lack thereof – are still visible. Not only does strength training remain a (patriarchy-inflected) source of empowerment and personal sovereignty for women who lift weights (Heywood, 1998; Malcom et al., 2021), but women at large continue to demonstrate low rates of adherence to national physical activity guidelines for strength training (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2018).

Exercise scientists also see men’s and women’s initial exposures to strength training as empirically interesting. Seeking to chart the beginnings of the strength gap, a large amount of research on sex-based differences in response to resistance training is conducted on adults who are ‘untrained’; in other words, individuals who have not strength trained in the six months prior to the study. In these studies, men and women are put through the same short-term (one-day to six-month) training protocol (e.g. Ahtiainen et al., 2016; O’Hagan et al., 1995). When participants’ amounts of muscle mass and levels of strength are measured at the conclusion of the study, the most common finding is that men have greater increases in strength and muscle size (Roberts et al., 2020). However, this finding does not imply that men’s and women’s muscles are different from one another. While men consistently experience greater absolute increases, both groups tend to increase their strength and muscle mass by the same relative amount, additionally implying similar neuromuscular improvements (Byrd et al., 2018; Cureton et al., 1988). This means that while men might have increased their best lifts by 5 kg, and women by 3 kg, both groups increased their strength and muscle mass by 5%. The difference between men’s and women’s initial responses to strength training is therefore best understood as a function of the amount of muscle mass and strength that they entered the study with, a product of their body size and training history. In other words, when presented with the exact same opportunities to engage in strength training, men’s and women’s capacities to develop strength seem remarkably equivalent.

Reading these conclusions regarding men’s and women’s initial exposures to resistance training through a biocultural lens, we can observe that each field sees hints of the biocultural nature of strength, gender, and sex that they are unequipped to pursue on their own. Sociocultural scholars have documented fluctuating yet persistent differences in cisgender men’s and women’s initial exposures to strength training but lack the concepts of progressive overload and adaptation to discuss the physiological elements of strength and express why these inequalities matter. Exercise scientists find that men and women have the same initial physiological responses to strength training, with differences in outcomes determined by genetic and cultural factors. Without the sociological concepts of gendered norms and embodiment, those cultural factors will remain a sticking point in exercise scientists’ findings.

This biocultural lens also makes new inquiries and potential collaborations thinkable. For example, it has been found that untrained women tend to put on more relative upper body strength than men when completing the same training protocol (O’Hagan et al., 1995). Because these women’s muscles did not grow at a relatively greater rate, it is implied that their greater strength increases were the result of improved neuromuscular connections. Are women biologically predisposed to developing neuromuscular control over their upper body muscles? Or – thinking bioculturally – are women discouraged from developing ‘masculine’ upper body musculature, giving untrained women greater potential for initial neuromuscular adaptations that even ‘untrained’ men developed years earlier? This is an idea that sociocultural theorists have already put forward. Over forty years ago, Young demonstrated the inaccuracy of the phrase ‘throwing like a girl’: the awkward throwing movements associated with girldom are simply a hallmark of inexperience, present among all beginner throwers. Yet this framework has not been applied to studies on strength training, making interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research not only plausible, but needed. Drawing upon the concepts of gendered norms and relative strength and muscle gain, how might our understandings of women’s capacities for maximal strength change if we start from the perception that – at least at the outset – men’s and women’s muscles change in the same ways and rates, if simply given an equal chance to do so?

Strength in difference: continuing divergences in long-term strength training

So far, this analysis has portrayed cisgender men’s and women’s bodies as incredibly similar where the physiological processes of strength gain are concerned. Rather than ‘naturally’ differing, it has been shown that bodies have been sorted into gender categories and provided unequal access to strength development, an argument reflecting the primary thesis of The Frailty Myth (Dowling, 2000). Yet bodies do diverge as the result of sociocultural and biological influences. This section addresses a select few such factors while moving beyond initial exposures and responses to strength training, seeking to answer the following question: as they proceed through their strength training careers, how do men and women continue to become stronger, differently?

In theorizing differences in athletic performance between cisgender men and women, sociocultural scholars generally point to the effects of gendered disparities in competitive opportunities, media coverage, elite athlete pay, access to strength and conditioning training, and other inequalities (Capranica et al., 2013; Cooky et al., 2015; Reynolds et al., 2012). Yet these critiques have yet to be meaningfully applied to strength sports, making it unclear how strength athletes’ careers may be differentially shaped by androcentrism in sport. However, each of these factors offers potential insights into the (biocultural) construction of the strength gap. For example: women Olympic Weightlifters were not allowed to compete at the Olympic level until 2000, while men had done so since 1896. How might this extremely delayed entry into Olympic competition have differentially structured the age at which cisgender men and women are recruited into the sport, affecting their time to benefit from hypertrophic and neuromuscular adaptations during their athletic careers and thus amplifying the perceived size of the strength gap? Over thirty years ago, exercise scientist Garhammer (1991) speculated that this might be the case. Sociocultural researchers have yet to take up this line of inquiry, among many others related to strength and gender.

To date, sociological research that documents how gender shapes strength athletes’ performances focuses on bodily practices, with each study pointing to the possibility that the embodiment of gendered norms impacts maximal strength. While gendered discourses have been shown to have positive or neutral effects on men’s bodily practices (Nelson & Jette, 2021; Sherouse, 2016), women have noted negative effects. Strongwomen (Newman, 2020), women Powerlifters (Pereira Vargas & Winter, 2021), and women Olympic Weightlifters (Nelson & Jette, 2023) have discussed achieving lighter and leaner weight classes to pursue their athletic and gendered aesthetic goals simultaneously, resulting in disordered eating and training behaviors. Combined with research asserting that women strength athletes need to gain weight over time to improve their performance (Miller et al., 2018), it can be concluded that gendered discourses may hinder these athletes’ careers. Yet there is a notable limitation to this body of literature: the inability to state whether women strength athletes demonstrate higher rates of weight loss and LEA than men strength athletes, who have recounted that sporting and dominant health discourses have pushed them towards lighter weight classes (Nelson & Jette, 2021). Between the lack of research on strength sports in general, and bodily practices and strength outcomes in particular, sociocultural scholars cannot state whether these gendered differences matter.

Exercise science sees men’s and women’s bodies diverging in a myriad of ways, with their hormonal pathways to strength gain among the most prominently studied. This literature begins from an interest in the role that hormones (most prominently, testosterone and estrogen) play in muscle damage and repair. Testosterone is understood as particularly important in the process of strength gain because it signals for muscle repair to occur after exercise-induced damage, enabling muscles to grow and express greater levels of strength over time (Luk et al., 2022). Conversely, estrogen is hypothesized to prevent damage to muscle fibers given its ability to bind with and strengthen cell walls, potentially diminishing the need for muscle repair and decreasing the amount of adaptation to resistance training (Aragón-Vela et al., 2021). Women’s lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen are theorized to hinder their ability to accumulate muscle mass, causing an ever-widening margin between men’s and women’s muscularity and strength. However, this heuristic does not fully encapsulate the existing research.

In contradiction to the idea that testosterone correlates with faster muscle development, cisgender men and women have similar rates of muscle protein synthesis after resistance training (Smith & Mittendorfer, 2012). Furthermore, resistance training research conducted only on women – a much smaller and very recent subset of literature – has indicated that estrogen plays a vital role in promoting muscle growth (Haines et al., 2018). While these findings do not eliminate testosterone as a potential factor in muscle growth, they do indicate that whatever role testosterone plays in men, it is not necessarily a requirement for equivalent relative muscle growth in women. We can state with certainty that bodies may become stronger in ways that materially differ; however, we cannot say that ‘different’ means ‘inferior.’ These conclusions raise questions about what we understand about sex-based differences and long-term strength outcomes. Thinking bioculturally: are divergences in maximal strength the effect of different hormonal pathways that are not equally understood? How are past and present narratives about hormones and strength currently affecting strength athletes’ training and dietary practices? And how might we design women’s training and recovery protocols to maximize their strength outcomes alongside their individualized hormonal pathways (Sims & Yeager, 2016)?

In reexamining the research on men’s and women’s differentiated paths to strength, this section has demonstrated that the social and biological sciences are situated in an equally challenging position. There are biological and cultural factors that may differentially shape men’s and women’s strength trajectories, but – given major absences in their bodies of literature – we are unsure whether these differences are meaningful in the construction of the strength gap. Crucially, this should not only be read as a call for more research, but as an opportunity to bring the two fields together as each (re)builds its shaky foundations. Again, each field has much to offer the other; this section demonstrates that there is plenty of room for such biocultural research, which offers the potential of improving our understandings of strength and benefitting the individuals that we are attempting to help.

Conclusion: rebuilding strength

By setting aside the strength gap and reading sociocultural researchers’ and exercise scientists’ understandings of (biocultural) strength development alongside one another, it becomes clear that the two fields are more alike than is believed. Exercise science and sociology/physical cultural studies have complementary concepts outlining the most basic processes of strength gain – embodiment, adaptation, and progressive overload – and have overlapping understandings of the potential equivalence of men’s and women’s initial strength trajectories. They also share a common challenge: while both disciplines see divergences in men’s and women’s strength training trajectories, their ability to trace these differences to long-term strength outcomes are hampered by major absences and oversights in existing literature. As each field seeks to better fill the gaps in its understandings of sex, gender, and strength, there is significant opportunity for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research that meaningfully draws upon the concepts, findings, and expertise of the other. There are many potential topics of study: the impact of gendered embodiment on individuals’ amounts and ratios of muscle fiber types, the translation of beliefs about hormones and strength into bodily practices that shape strength outcomes, and women strength athletes’ experimentation with (or rejection of) menstrual cycle-centered strength programming are just a few possibilities for collaborative exploration. Each offers a more holistic understanding of strength development that is impossible within siloed academic disciplines.

Finally – and perhaps most importantly – a biocultural orientation to strength research also allows us to have different conversations about strength differences. Our academic and public discussions about strength, sex, and gender are often polarized, emphasizing either the biological or sociocultural underpinnings of strength and asserting the reality or non-existence of the strength gap (Scovel et al., 2023). A biocultural perspective pushes us to acknowledge the nuance of strength, gender, and sex in two novel ways. First, it induces us to understand that the strength gap will always be subject to change. Strength is the product of each body’s interactions with and adaptations to specific physical and cultural contexts: as these contexts change, so too will individuals’ capacities for maximal strength. Secondly, and by the same logic, a biocultural perspective encourages us to frame strength as a spectrum rather than a binary, acknowledging that bodies, identities, and experiences of strength training come in many forms. Using these insights, it becomes possible to have conversations that do not frame strength levels as something that can be summed up by a single statistic or as the result of predominantly sociocultural or biological influences. Ultimately, thinking bioculturally about strength lets us think differently about sex, gender, and bodies, potentially enabling us to imagine new methods of categorizing athletes and organizing social structures beyond binary understandings of physical strength.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).